Let's Hear It For Curtis Strange And Immortality

You can root your head off for Jack Nicklaus or Greg Norman or Fred Couples or even Webb Heintzelman, but the man I'd like to see win this week's U.S. Open is Curtis Strange.

I'm on Strange's bandwagon for one reason only -- for immortality. The man has a shot at a U.S. Open Triple, and winning three straight U.S. Opens could almost be compared to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Some records just aren't made to be broken.

It's been 85 years since a man named Willie Anderson won three straight U.S. Open titles. Goodness, only four players in the history of the championship (it began way back in 1895) managed to win two Opens back-to-back. Three is practically unheard of.

Before Strange won two years ago at Brookline and last year at Oak Hill, the legendary Ben Hogan was the last to score that double, and that was in 1950 and 1951.

What makes Strange's two straight Open championships all the more impressive is that the competition is far greater now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Just winning one of those weekly PGA Tour stops takes some doing.

Strange is the main story line at Medinah this week, and from all reports, he's handling the attention very well. He says he's playing well enough to win.

I'd love to see him be competitive right to the end. I kind of think all of golf would like to see that, too. Television, especially, has its fingers crossed for a pairing late Sunday afternoon that would have Strange in either one of the final three groups. Ratings, you know.

A historical U.S. Open could be in the offing.

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Gordon Neely's got the entry list for the second annual Lady Club Pro Tournament at Shawnee and it shows that lady pros from Florida, Iowa, Georgia, Texas, just to name a few states, are in the field. The bulk of the field, however, is from the East, mainly New Jersey and New York. The three ladies who figured in last year's championship -- Cindy Pietrusik, the winner; and two ladies who were in a playoff with her, Susie Berdoy and Sue Delaney -- head the field that will be at Shawnee for the three-day event. Pietrusik, from the Westmoreland Country Club in Export, near Pittsburgh, won the championship last year with a chip-in birdie on the first sudden death playoff hole. The ladies will participate in a pro-am tournament Sunday, then play two rounds (on Monday and Tuesday) for the championship. Neely, the head pro at Shawnee who originated the championship, says the public is welcome to watch the tournament.

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The folks at Shepherd Hills are proud of this year's Shepherd Hills Scholarship Fund award-winner, Corey Rinehimer. The young Emmaus golfer, who just graduated the other day with honors, is headed for Wake Forest. Not only has Rinehimer been on the Emmaus golf team for four years, two of which he captained the team, but also has been an honor roll student all the way. He ranked 18th in his senior class of 446. He'll be studying biomedical engineering. Two past scholarship winners, Bryan Nosal and Andrew Becker, have distinguished themselves at Penn State and American University, respectively. The bulk of the money raised for the Scholarship Fund comes from the club's fall eight-inch cup tournament.